A “Name That Tune” like competition seems to be going around, though not with naming a musical tune in a minimum number of notes, but rather in guessing when Windows 7 will be widely available in the shortest amount of time.
Originally there was talk on the street of Windows 7 being widely available by 2010. Not sure who really originated this one. Then Long Zheng read the Windows tea leaves and came up with October 2009. Not to be outdone, Ed Bott has been eyeing July 2009 as a possible launch date. And now Paul Thurrott tosses in a stunningly close date of April 2009.
Anyone want to predict January 2009? Anyone? 
Kind of silly, isn’t it?
As I’ve blogged before, if Microsoft picks a date like Paul or Ed is suggesting, I’m a little concerned that there won’t be much community developer support by that time. Let’s face it, even at PDC there wasn’t much real developer talk about the new multi-touch, or info about the Math Input Panel or even the new taskbar. And there’s lots more too. Now maybe Microsoft is thinking that it only needs to work with a handful of top ISVs for each of these areas and then let the rest of the market catch up over time–for the sake of the small developers I hope not. Are all small developers going to have to switch to the iPhone platform? Heh. Or is teched2009 going to be the seminal developer event for Windows 7?
